


A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning

by doctornerdington



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Forgiveness, Hand porn, Love, M/M, Mild Gore, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, The Empty House, Turkish Bath, Watson's medical practice, corrective, john donne, poetry reference, uncategorizeable relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-06
Updated: 2014-10-06
Packaged: 2018-02-20 02:13:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,952
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2411210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doctornerdington/pseuds/doctornerdington
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A year after the events of "The Empty House," Watson and Holmes at last face up to their unresolved feelings for each other.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning

For all that my friend Sherlock Holmes was a tactile man – forever fingering fabrics, tracing his bow with a practiced flourish, caressing a teacup with his somehow frenetic delicacy – he was rarely so with people, and an occasional restraining hand in a moment of professional tension or a friendly arm during an evening constitutional evinced to me clearly what were to be the limits of our physical intimacy. This was not surprising, for I had been his close observer and chronicler for many years, and had assumed from almost the beginning of our acquaintance that his complete disregard for his bodily health while on a case was but a symptom of his more general suspicion of the requirements, but also the pleasures, of the flesh.

In this most private of memoirs, I can reveal that this quite relieved many of my misapprehensions as to his indulgence in pleasures rather more likely to harm than to benefit him. By now, I had largely weaned him of his dependence on his vile seven per cent solution (although a total cure continues to elude me), and that was only ever taken for the express purpose of mental stimulus. Had his voracious need for constant stimulation extended to the bodily appetites, I shudder to think of the roads he would gleefully have trod, without thought, in search of only God knows what sensational novelty. God, that is, or some other creature – for I had no illusion that Holmes, though profoundly moral, could ever have been called God-fearing. I would call him, instead, the most fearless man I have known. He was ever guided by a compass crafted by his own hand, his mental acuity placing him so often beyond the dictates of conventional laws – whether God’s, or man’s.

It was nearly a year after his apparent return from the grave, the events of which I recently laid before the public in “The Adventure of the Empty House,” that I was called out for what was to be the most harrowing professional experience I’ve had since my discharge. The death of my dear wife and Holmes’ return from what I had supposed to be his death had occurred with staggering simultaneity, and it was barely a month after I buried my Mary that I found myself reinstated in my old rooms in Baker Street. For all the joy I felt at Holmes’ return, my heart at times misgave me, and in missing Mary and silently reproaching Holmes for his absence, a sort of sublimated aggression had become rather the rule in our daily interactions. I could not conceive of his thoughts during those three grief-filled years, when a single word from him would have been a balm to my gravest blow. My new knowledge of his cold neglect, conversely, settled in my chest like a wound, and rankled, unspoken. For in the haze of my initial astonishment I had forgiven him, immediately, when he asked, and had no right to now raise the matter again. Yet still, his protestations of good will rang false with me, and there had stood between us, for all of this wonderful, dreadful year, a great, unspoken chasm that prevented the true resumption of our previous closeness.

I’d barely seen Holmes at all that day, but his erratic personal habits made this hardly unusual. Since his return, my medical practice had once again suffered in competition with Holmes’ adventures, for what was the treatment of a seasonal sniffle here, or a mild sprain there, compared to the spectral hounds, desperate villains, and distressed unfortunates that made up Holmes’ bread and butter? At times, now, I felt I hated and loved the man in equal measure, but still, I would follow him to the death – again and again – should he ask it of me. Still, although my client list dwindled, I kept my medical bag well stocked and ever at the ready; years of habit and a somewhat dangerous style of life made this only prudent.

The day was a cold one, with a freezing, persistent winter drizzle and a strong wind keeping me indoors. I had sat before the fire, listening to the rain beating against the windows, and feeling somewhat at loose ends. I read for a time, completed some trifling correspondence, and attempted to write, but caught myself several times sitting uneasily in the silence, watching Holmes’ closed bedroom door. I had never found his erratic habits to be a trial before, but since returning to Baker Street, I often discovered myself listening with an eager heart, and with unjustified annoyance, whenever he took to his bed for extended periods. I believe I felt the ache of his death, the barbed sting of his return, a little more keenly when he was not present.

Mrs. Hudson was just clearing up the remains of my mid-day meal of a rather tasty lemon sole when we heard a frantic banging at the front door, followed by a tread fairly racing up the stair to our apartments. I must admit that my heart rose, in expectation, to my throat, so often have our thrilling cases begun with such an impromptu introduction. Mrs. Hudson raised an eyebrow and gestured, questioningly, at Holmes’ closed bedroom door, and I made to stand and fetch the man at once – here, clearly, was an urgent client. Before I could move, however, our boy Billy Gedge burst through the sitting room door, much to my astonishment. He stopped still on the threshold, almost staggering, and pulled an unusually grimy hat over his face, which was paler than I had ever seen it, and streaked with tears. We had not seen him for several days, which made his sudden appearance all the more surprising. He stood gasping at the threshold, hiding his face, and saying nothing.

“Now, now, Billy. Dear me!” I cried, as Mrs. Hudson rushed to console the child. “What’s the matter, my boy?”

Billy sniffed into Mrs. Hudson’s shoulder, and took a deep, shuddering breath. “Doctor,” he began, “it’s me da’, sir! Please, you must come! I don’t know what to do. There was an accident, and he wouldn’t see no doctor, sir, not since me ma died in the ‘ospital. But he’s right poorly. He’s ‘alf off his head, and we can’t hold him down now he’s burning up and quite maddened, sir!” During this speech – rather more than I had ever heard from the usually subdued lad – Billy had shrugged off Mrs. Hudson’s gentle arm, sidled around the table, and was practically picking at my shirtsleeve in his anxiety.

As unused as I had become to urgent medical cases, I could see that there was nothing to be gained by delay. I rose at once and assumed what I knew to be my most comforting and competent demeanor. “Not to worry, my dear boy. I’ll come at once, and we’ll soon set him right.” And, with a brief word to Mrs. Hudson and a moment to dress against the damp chill, I did exactly that, following Billy at a breakneck pace out into the street.

I was relieved to see that the wind and rain had died away, but in their place, a thick fog had engulfed the city. At my insistence, we hailed a hansom; the opacity of the fog made me fear we’d go astray and lose precious time to wandering should we go on foot. The cab conveyed us as swiftly as the driver dared go, the horse shying and whinnying at shadows cast by the driver’s lamp. The click of the horse’s shoes on the cobbles were the only sound, aside from Billy’s shallow breaths. The boy was exhausted. I grasped his shoulder, and willed the cab on.

At last, we arrived at a small house in a narrow lane just off the docks. Bidding the cabbie to wait, I followed Billy into the house. The family had the room under the eaves: a small space furnished simply with a bed, table, unmatched chairs and, holding prize of place over the mantle, an unframed photograph of a straightforward, plain-looking woman with kind, tired eyes. Upon entering, we were confronted with the acrid smell of blood and the sicker stench of decay. I had learned during the war to diagnose sepsis by smell alone; this was certainly a most advanced case.

“When was this man injured?” I asked in surprise. “This is not a fresh wound!”

Two men stood as sentries at the foot of the bed while Gedge groaned feebly behind them; they glanced at each other uneasily.

“He wouldn’t let us send for no doctor,” the larger of the two replied. “It were Monday night, it happened.”

“Great heavens!” I exclaimed. It was now Thursday.

The men, I learned, were Billy’s uncles, and had been with the man at the time of the mishap. Gedge had been caught up in some brutal piece of machinery, and pulled out by these stout fellows at great risk to themselves, and although he had escaped with his life, his injuries were fearful.

The company had built up a fire on the hearth, and the room was blazing hot. Gedge had thrown off the bedclothes in his agony, and I could see that he was still dressed in his work clothes. “He wouldn’t let us touch him,” the larger of the two brothers explained, apologetically. “We wanted to bathe him, and keep him clean, like, but he screams fearful’ whenever anyone goes near.”

I set my bag on the floor, and beckoned Billy to me. “I’m going to need you to be very brave, Billy,” I said gravely. “Your father is grievously hurt, and sick with it. I need to examine him, but I need to keep him as still as possible. Can you help with that?”

With eyes round as saucers, Billy nodded.

“Good lad. I’ll let you know before I touch him.” And with that, I squeezed his shoulder once more, and bid him stand at his father’s head. Billy bent forward, murmuring quietly in the poor man’s ear. The fevered thrashing gradually calmed; Gedge turned his eyes to his son, and reached for his hand.

I commenced a visual inspection, as best I was able. A splintered bone protruded sharply from Johnson’s torn and bloody trousers, and his lower extremity was entirely mangled. I knew I would not be able to determine the damage by sight alone.

I moved up to the head of the bed. “Good evening, Gedge. I’m Dr. Watson. I’m sorry to meet you in such a state as this, but we’ll soon have you well again, won’t we, Billy?” Billy nodded vigorously.

Gedge was too hoarse now to wail, and parched, but he groaned deeply as I touched him. His skin was burning hot with fever, but worryingly dry under my hands as I took his vital signs.

I knew I would need to at least determine the extent of the injury before I would be able to suggest a course of treatment. I did not wish to compound the injury, but was loath to act blindly, and so cause more damage. I steeled myself; a doctor must be able to visualize the three-dimensional aspects of the anatomy he is about to manipulate. He must take great care in handling sensitive structures surrounding the area in question, such as nerves and blood vessels, to prevent cutting through or destroying them entirely, lest the procedure cause more injury than it corrects. Combat doctors know this instinctively, although they are sometimes forced by circumstance to act more hastily than they would like. Civilian surgeons, though, make me wary. I have more than once encountered a scalpel-happy butcher who would as soon carve up a man to identify his injury as he would take an easier course to heal him. I had no wish to subject this good man to such a fate.

I needed to calm the man and assuage his pain before he would allow me to properly examine him. He jerked away from the gentlest touch, crying out most pitifully. I feared he would do himself more damage before I had even seen to his injury. As I opened my bag, a great feeling of dread stole over me, stealthy as a fog. The close atmosphere of those stinking quarters and the cries of the afflicted man recalled me immediately to my days in Afghanistan. There was a reason I had not returned to surgical practice. My nerves would not allow it.

With shaking hands, I prepared a syringe and an appropriate dosage of morphine, which would allow him to relax for the first time since his injury. His near-instantaneous sigh of relief was shared by all in the room.

I waited for the morphine to take full effect, and then began to remove the blankets and make-shift bandages from his injured leg. I was able to pass my hand up and down the length of the man’s appendage. I could feel the sharp ends of a shattered tibia thrusting its way through the skin. I palpated the injury as gently as I was able, the crust of scab giving way to slippery blood beneath my hands. Occasionally, a pustule would burst, discharging fetid ooze. Even with the morphine, the man screamed himself into hoarseness, but his brothers held him still, and he was too weak to fight them off in any case. The bed was a gory mess of blood and puss by the time my examination was complete, and every man in the room was shaking in sympathetic pain with the patient.

Perhaps his injury was no worse than many a bullet-shattered leg I’d seen in combat, but at least then I’d had the luxury of immediate action. The three days’ delay in calling me in had turned a fracture into a gangrenous mess. It was clear to me that even if the man’s life could be spared, his leg could not.

Immediate attention was required, and one name came immediately to mind: that of Halsted, an old friend of mine from medical school. Leg fractures were of particular interest to him; in fact, one of his earliest scientific papers assessed the surgical repair of fractured bones using a series of geometric equations calculated from the angle of abduction from the central axis of the body. I had been quite struck by it at the time, and here was an opportunity to put the man’s expertise to good use.

I bent to wash my hands in a basin set near the bed, and glanced over to my patient’s face to offer some words of reassurance – and then, I cannot say what happened. For a moment, time stood still. There was a great roaring in my ears, and I thought I should lose consciousness. Instead, I felt my gorge rise insistently in my throat, and I staggered back, struggling to control my reaction. I had performed several amputations in Afghanistan, and suddenly my head was filled with the shuddering rasp of a bone saw through living flesh. This was the nightmare of the war I had never been able to escape.

Before my sightless eyes, I saw men ripped to shreds; flesh and pulp and muck indistinguishable in the shadows. I turned again to the bed, but it was not Billy’s father I saw there, but the gaunt and agonized face of my own dear wife, thrashing in pain. And then too, I thought I saw Holmes’ face, as if from very far away, plunging into a great abyss, a look of unspeakable horror upon his countenance as he called my name. I, paralyzed, could do nothing, nothing.

Blinking, rubbing at my traitorous eyes, I staggered back. A piercing pain exploded in my thigh, tracing the path once travelled by a Jezail bullet in agony.

I lived the horrors of my life several times over in the minutes I was incapacitated, trapped in a torturous prison of my own making.

I had fought with this sensation in the past – quite often, after my discharge – of living in two places, two times at once, and seeing what I knew to be the present only through the bleak and painful shade of the battlefields of my past. Some small physical pain often was sometimes enough to bring me back to myself, and so, while I could not beat my head on the wall in a room full of men, I did what I could, grasping the sensitive skin on the inside of my left wrist between right index finger and thumb, and twisting sharply, savagely, until the pain drowned out the strangeness that had entered my mind.

Gradually, my head cleared. I gulped great gasps of air. I was seated on the floor, slumped against the wall, with no idea how I had come to be in this position. Sound came back first, and I heard, as from a distance, Billy’s worried voice.

“Doctor? Doctor, sir? Is it as bad as that? Oh please, sir, won’t you tell me? I can take it, sir, you know I can.”

Ashamed of myself for so alarming the boy, I released my hold on my own wrist and turned, reaching blindly for his shoulder. I pulled him close.

“It’s not that, my dear boy. I apologize.” I was so filled with shame at my weakness; I would not raise my eyes to Billy or his uncles. “It’s only a momentary recurrence of an illness I had thought already behind me. It is nothing.” I could not yet stand; I shook and trembled like a drunkard.

I would not, I reminded myself, amputate this man’s leg. I would never, please god, amputate anything, ever again. The war was over. Mary was at peace, and Holmes was well.

Billy brought me a glass of water, and slowly I recovered myself enough to retreat. There was nothing more I could do for Gedge, but I promised to send further aid immediately. Leaving Billy clutching his father’s limp hand, I stepped out onto the now-dark street and resumed my place in the waiting hansom.

A brief stop in Harley Street allowed me to make the necessary arrangements for my patient’s transportation and care at Halstead’s private infirmary. I explained the details of the case, and the good man undertook full responsibility for the man’s care, surgery, and convalescence. I thanked him, and turned to leave, but he grasped my arm earnestly.

“You’re not well yourself, Watson, if you’ll excuse my saying. Won’t you stay for a brandy by the fire? You must warm yourself, man; this is a terrible day to be out.”

Those few words of kindness nearly undid the tenuous control that was holding me together. “Thank you,” I whispered hoarsely, “but no. I simply need rest.” I took my leave, desperate to be alone and safe in a place I could quietly fall apart, and piece myself back together as best I knew how.

As I seated myself in the cab, a violent trembling again overtook me, to the degree that my teeth chattered painfully. I directed the cabbie to take me back to Baker Street, then closed my eyes and simply attempted to endure my misery, the fog outside the window seeming to swirl through my addled head until it was empty, empty, empty of all thought and all life.

The next thing I was aware of was a violent knocking on the roof of the cab – it seemed we had arrived. I staggered out, found a handful of coins in my pocket, and thrust them up to the cabbie. I suppose he thought me drunk.

As I ascended the well-worn steps to 221B just an hour or two after my hasty departure, I could not but reflect on what a difference that time had wrought. I shook, but only partially with the chill; my face was flushed, and my brow unpleasantly damp. The phantom bullet in my leg was an agony. But worse, I feared the beast I could feel rising within me; feared the damage it could inflict, tearing apart body and mind through fever and into madness. I had had episodes of weakness such as this before, and knew the aftermath could last days, and could be as unpleasant as the acute horror of the spark itself. I had not felt myself to be in this state for many years, and had, indeed, hoped the weakness had been left, at last, in the past.

I wished for nothing so much as calming solitude in which to regain my composure, for I had always tried to keep my condition to myself. Even at the height of our intimacy, I had not cared to trouble Holmes with my weakness. It was not that I did not trust him, nor even that I did not wish to burden him. Simply, there should be no witness to my horrors, and never that man who asks only that I conduct his own light without swallowing it whole. His light is blinding, when it shines, and I cannot help but reflect it as anyone would; but too, it is fragile, and I would not risk its contamination for worlds.

Instead of the solitude I so desired, I was met by Holmes, playing jarring little fragments on his violin and pacing absently about the room, evidently at loose ends after his lengthy period of rest. He looked up as I entered, and I was conscious of quick eyes raking over every small detail of my person. His bow scraped an atonal, inquisitive run.

“For God’s sake, Holmes, will you put that down?” I said savagely, tearing the instrument from his grasp and setting it on the table with an audible thud.

Silently, he raised his eyebrows, moved the instrument carefully to its case, and seated himself, Indian-style, on the settee furthest from the fire. He casually lit a cigarette. “Pray take your seat, my dear Watson. Draw near the fire, and tell me what has so affected you.”

“Nothing at all has affected me, Holmes,” I muttered, shivering ever more violently even as I did as he bid. “The evening chill simply took me by surprise as I returned from my calls.”

His sharp eyes flickered over my shaking frame, my slumped shoulders, my clammy brow. He inclined his head. “As you say, doctor.” To my ears, he sounded mocking. The man was at times so near a wizard as to be able to seemingly pluck my thoughts from the air around my head, but for now, he at least held his tongue.

I sat miserably before the fire. A moment of silence banked over us. Holmes smoked quickly, and lit another cigarette from the end of the first. I wanted a smoke, and a drink, quite urgently myself, but did not trust my trembling legs to bear my weight.

At last, Holmes drew a breath to speak.

“Watson, I deduce from your –”

“Not now, Holmes,” I choked out, barely recognizing the voice I had meant to be angry. I would not play this game; my misery would not be his entertainment. “Please,” I added, pathetically, without looking up, for the image of his ghostly, plunging face had come before my eyes once again, and I feared I would lose my composure entirely if I looked up at him and saw… I knew not what on his face. Disinterested curiosity? Disgust? Pity? Or even, I thought with rising hysteria, a ghostly shadow of death?

Walls, I thought, desperately. I must construct walls around these thoughts. There will be safety outside of them, safety for me, and for him. I wished to protect him, always; equally, now, I wished to hurt, and his protection must be from my own raging mind.

“You have been to the docks, I perceive from your boots,” Holmes went on, and continued with a string of relentless deductions, effectively retracing my movements of the day. The intellectual leaps I had always applauded chilled me now, for his rattling off of the places I had been had no corollary to the state of my mind; there was, in short, no reason at all for my distress. Holmes, therefore, either did not see it, or was biding his time.

“You took a hansom home, and did not stop at your club. It was, in short, an ordinary day, and less strenuous than many,” Holmes finished, a note of perplexity in his voice, for although he had traced my movements with extraordinary accuracy, he had said nothing that would account for my current state of distress. I had not yet looked up, nor had I confirmed his deductions. “Why then--?”

“Holmes, enough!” I interrupted. “I need a drink.” I gestured to the sideboard at Holmes’ side. “If you’re done interrogating me, would you please…?” I did not trust my throbbing leg to hold me up.

Holmes paused, considering.

“I’m afraid, Watson, I’m quite occupied at the moment.” He picked up a book from the table before him, and lit another cigarette. “I’m sure it is no inconvenience for you to help yourself?” He looked at me assessingly.

I confess that I was fairly staggered by this; I had often been on the receiving end of Holmes’ curiosity, but never had he dragged information out of me that I had so manifestly not wished to impart. It felt ham-fistedly cruel, and I raised shocked eyes to his face at last.

He held my gaze for a moment, before bending to his book, eyes trained still on my person.

With a sort of desperate, despairing pride, I dragged myself to my feet and limped to the sideboard to pour out a large brandy. An alcoholic stupor would surely be preferable to this. Despite trembling hands, I managed the pour quite well, I thought, and carefully did not slam the bottle down again. But as I turned to resume my chair, Holmes closed his book with a clap, and in an abrupt full-body paroxysm, my mind entirely deserted me. In some sort of panicked reflex, I quite threw my glass against the wall. Brandy cascaded over the carpet, the table, over Holmes; the glass shattered and fell.

Holmes jumped; looked at me with wide, shocked eyes. I have rarely seen him so discomfited.

“My dear boy,” he fairly stammered. “Forgive my startling you.”

I turned away, face red and heart still racing. With bitter satisfaction that I had, at least, surprised the all-knowing detective, I turned once more and poured out another drink with a suddenly steady hand. I downed it quickly, and poured out again before finally turning back to Holmes.

Without speaking, I limped back to my own chair. Holmes had yet to move; brandy, I saw, dripped from his chin and speckled his dressing gown. As I walked past, he grabbed my wrist. “Forgive me,” he said again, more softly. “I was wrong to provoke you.” I cannot guess what he saw in my face then.

As he spoke, his fingers pressed precisely against my pulse point – a trick he used often – but I winced and drew away as his strong fingers pressed into the bruised and swollen flesh of my inner wrist. Again he raised his eyebrows; I was having unusual success at surprising the man tonight. Glancing down at my small injury, his face displayed a flash of recognition, of exultant understanding, and yet then became so infinitely gentle and sorrowful of a sudden that I felt myself sag. His pity would be my final humiliation of the evening.

I drew away again, saying nothing, and resumed my seat. Silently, I gazed into the fire, willing its warmth and the scorch of the brandy to keep the tremors at bay.

Holmes silently rose and fetched a rag from his washstand. After drying himself, he knelt and blotted the liquid out of the carpet and upholstery, then swept up the shards of glass, and called down to Mrs. Hudson to dispose of the mess.

Finally, he turned to me. “I ask you again to forgive me. Please, Watson. Please. Will you favour me with your company on a small expedition this evening?”

“Really, Holmes,” I answered, for being surprised by him has long ceased to surprise me at all, “I am not… I am hardly in the mood for the club, and I’m far too chilled to walk. The weather is abominable. If you have a case, go on your own. You’ve no need of my assistance, and I’ve no need of your pity.”

“Ah, Watson,” he sighed. And instead of responding to anything I had said, he artlessly asked: “Come with me to the baths?”

I hesitated. For as miserable and as angry as I was, a Turkish bath was one of the only remedies to this particular weakness that had ever had any beneficial effect. Holmes had hit upon the one outing that had any chance of luring me out in his company. And yet, my anger remained, for what could such a man possibly care for my wellbeing?

“It’s been an age, and we could both use a good steam,” he went on. “I did not know,” he added lowly and enigmatically, but he repeated, “please understand, I did not know any of this. All shall be well again, John. All shall be as it was. I vow it.”

In the end, it was that promise, that strange and pleading note in his voice, which decided me. And then I was again at his side, walking out through the fog in search of a cab.

***

I was entirely confounded by the time we arrived at the Northumberland Avenue establishment: exasperated with Holmes and his bloody single-mindedness, but furious with myself for succumbing again to my old weakness, and for doing so in his company.

We walked through the outer doors of the establishment, and I paused at the top of the oak staircase leading to the baths below, and drew a shaky breath. Without a word, Holmes took my arm and moved to support me down the stairs. I shook him off, and silently stalked forward, unable to face his insufferable pity for the pain he had, himself, helped to create. I heard a perturbed sigh at my back, but my irritation propelled me down the stairs; my leg held out and I gained the lower landing without incident.

Holmes paid our 2 s. admission, the late hour lowering the rate to something we had, even in our younger days, been able to scrape together. In that way – if in no other, I reflected bitterly – it was, indeed, like the old days.

A valet relieved us of our greatcoats, and bid us follow him through the central cooling room, where several unclothed men were reclining, reading and even sleeping on small couches in their divans, so relaxed were they after their baths. He led us to a recess in the far corner, where a small alcove hung with bright tapestries provided a measure of privacy. Here, he removed our garments and wrapped thin sheets of cotton about us, before placing cloth slippers on our feet and leading us back to the main room. Knowing our solitary habits well, he showed us up to the deserted upper level of the luxuriously-appointed cooling room. From this vantage point, we could look down onto the dark oak-panels and Turkey rugs beneath us, and at busier hours, the many figures, swathed like Egyptian mummies on their upholstered bunks. Here, however, we were alone in our divan, set off from the others by a series of walnut screens inlaid with panels of coloured leaded glass in peacock blue and gold, and furnished with two sumptuously upholstered couches, an occasional table, and a magnificent gilt mirror.

The entire room was lit dimly with candles. Leading off the cooling room were three bathing chambers of varying temperatures. Holmes and I habitually chose the warmest, the calidarium, as our best defence against the chill of a London winter, and the most efficient treatment for its deleterious effects upon our persons – effects that seemed, if not graver, perhaps more persistent as each year passed. As the hour was already late, we wasted no time in pushing past the heavy oaken door, and entering the baths proper.

We were hit immediately with a wall of steam, as if the air was a warm liquid and we swimmers in a great subterranean pool. Our grateful bodies, wound tense with chill and with words unspoken, began to relax. Here, the great subterranean boilers found their release, and even the depths of a London winter held no sway. In the steam, condensation dripped from the ceiling, the marble surfaces gleamed in the dim lamplight, and one could see barely a yard in front of one’s face. The atmosphere was thick in our lungs. In keeping with our habit, we saved our intercourse for the cooling room afterwards, and silently joined the few other men already recumbent on the great marble slab in the centre of the room. As in Constantinople’s masterpiece baths at Cemberlitas, this octagonal slab is heated to an almost unbearable degree, and the subject strips, and reclines along one side with only the cotton sheet separating him from the burning marble. One can then look up at the domed ceiling – a false construction, no doubt – but one can almost imagine oneself basking in the riches of Suleiman’s magnificent empire, just on the verge of decay. Twinkling lamplight is indistinguishable from moonlight in such a moment. The only scent is that of the keseci’s soap, the musk of sweating bodies, and the slightest whiff of mold.

When we arrived, the keseci was working over another client; naked but for a loincloth, he pummeled and scrubbed the sweating man on the slab, who emitted occasional groans when the energetic and cleansing massage grew intense. Bathed steam and heat, I imagined Holmes’ quiet smile; the Turkish bath, whatever its benefits, is not without its pains. We took our places and stretched out on the marble.

It is the keseci’s job to take a man apart, piece by piece. A quick dousing with tepid water relieves the worst of the heat-flush, and forces the eyes shut tight against the spray. The keseci starts his assault – for such it truly is; a Turkish massage is energetic in the extreme – at the shoulder, scrubbing a soaped, coarse mitt over the full expanse of back, buttock, and thigh, before whipping the cloth into a dense cloud of lather that falls about the body in fragrant clouds. He then begins an earnest pummeling of every major muscle group, now with the heel of his palm, now an elbow, climbing upon the slab itself and pounding full body weight onto the obstinate areas, and a vigorous flexing of each joint, from toes to fingertips. Once muscles unclench, some unwillingly, releasing their tension to the heat and the practiced insistence of their temporary master, he turns to the outer layers, scrubbing off ropes of London filth so black and dense as to turn one’s stomach. Every inch of skin is so treated, until the keseci deems the body ready to emerge, pink and new, from its foamy cocoon. Then, as for a child, he bends and cradles one’s newborn, wobbly head in his palm, and assists one to sit on the side of the slab. With ever more buckets of tepid water, he washes one’s hair out, and rinses away the soap and filth.

Thus the keseci’s art appears from the outside. To experience it upon one’s own person, however, is another matter entirely. The effect on body and mind is alchemical; one turns one’s body over to another’s keeping for a time, trusting him to know it better than one does oneself, and then can simply abscond, for a time. That day, as I lay sweating in the dim, steaming silence awaiting my turn to go under the keseci’s merciless hands, I watched the mist swirl above me, and tried pry my rebellious mind from the events of the day. Indeed, the patterns in the mist became indistinguishable, in time, from thoughts in my head, which I fancied grew into corporeal beings of swirling droplets, some marching away, no longer available to grasp, some crawling, with crooked fingers holding tight to the threads leading back to my mind. They swirl, they claw, they fight, but the mist drags them on, up to the dim, recessed ceiling. It reminds me of nothing so much as an opium dream, a dim remembrance from my long-ago convalescence in Afghanistan, when pleasure and pain were so comingled as to be indistinguishable, and my mind took such flights of fancy that I often feared it was no longer my own.

And that is surely the crux of it all; to control one’s mind, to enforce the necessary discipline to regulate one’s emotions and behavior – that is sanity, and to lose, however temporarily, that ability is a small death, perhaps my own Reichenbach to face. I would fight that fatal plunge with all of my being.

The keseci finished up with the man on my left, who padded off to the cold plunge room, and moved to my side. A brisk slap to my flank let me know he was about to begin, and then his hands were upon me and I was at once in agony, my body shrieking in exact proportion to the pain in my mind. The keseci’s art is ungentle, and too, it is an exercise in care; he takes one apart only in order to put one back together, in better and truer condition.

I’m embarrassed to say I groaned piteously under his hands; I was not well when I entered the baths, and that is my only defence. The pain in my mind became embodied under the keseci’s hands; my face was wet, but the water was salt, not fresh. The keseci systematically kneaded it out, his hands causing first acute pain in each muscle he palpated, and then a gradual relaxing, an easing, the hand of a fellow man walking by my side and snatching me from the dark. Every inch of my body was touched, hurt, relaxed, eased, and by the time his attention turned from deep muscle tissue to skin, the healing warmth of the bath had overtaken me, and my pain dissipated. As the keseci raised me up for my final rinse, I saw obliquely Holmes’ eyes rest on me, quite softly. He looked, I was surprised to see, quite devastatingly relieved.

The keseci moved on to Holmes, who bore his attentions with greater grace than I; I listened to the wet slaps and occasional low hiss of an indrawn breath with nothing but amused sympathy. It seemed my own internal crisis had not spilled over onto him, and I thank the good Lord for it. Eventually, Holmes was scrubbed and rinsed himself; by unspoken agreement, we forwent the dubious pleasure of the cold plunge and the valet returned to lead us back to our private divan.

Holmes threw himself down on his couch with a contented sigh, and looked at me with a slight smile on his face. His eyes were so soft and kind just then that many men of our acquaintance would not have recognized him. I had not seen this look of late, and by God, I had missed it. I joined him wordlessly, sinking into the plush upholstery of my own couch.

We lay in silent companionship, as we had so often before in this same cooling room, for several minutes. The valet returned and placed glasses of sweet mint tea and dishes of fruit on the table beside us before silently withdrawing. Fragrance filled the air between us. The after-effects of the Turkish bath are singular in my experience; somehow, the soporific and enervating combine to produce a wholly unique state of being. The body melts into its support, muscles entirely lax, yet the skin is fresh and tingling to the cooler air, scraped virgin-bare and naked to the smallest sensation. The faintest breath of air can produce the most startling stimulation, and body and mind are, at least for a time, united in a state of relaxed expectation.

Gradually, my mind lighted on the hint of a small sensation on my wrist, a slow, creeping touch that travelled, spider-like, down and over my hand in time with every slow breath I took. At first, it was so subtle that it barely seemed distinct from my own wandering mind: a consequence, perhaps, of the energetic manipulations I had just undergone. Its systematic nature, though, was not in keeping with such a notion, and I slowly turned my attention to the sensation. It was, I realized, a gentle and persistent caress. And it was coming at the hands of one Sherlock Holmes.

I twisted, inquiringly, to see his face, but his eyes were closed in silent repose, and his chest rose and fell languidly. The rest of his body had not moved; he did not speak: only his arm reached out to me, across the space between our couches. In my post-bath lassitude, I did not think to question him. In honesty, I rarely think to question him. I suspect that in other circumstances, my heart would have pounded, my cheek heated, but the cooling room is aptly named. Here, bodies are simply extensions of inner ourselves, and our physical intertwining seemed as natural as the interassurance our minds already shared. We lay, side by side, and hand in hand, for several minutes, with increasing comfort. I did not then know what was in his heart, but I know what was in mine.

I detected a slow slackening of his grip, and wondered idly if he was drifting into sleep, as was sometimes his wont after a bath. I hoped he was; he always had need of rest. The gentle indolence of the baths overtook me, and I too closed my eyes. I do not think I slept, but my mind wandered lazily, for a time, somewhat afield. Despite the darkness of my day, I did not think of that; my horrors had dissipated and I thought not of Gedge, nor of Afghanistan, nor of my own troubles, but seemed to float in a cloud of idle contentment.

I came back to myself to feel a gentle stroking over the back of my hand. Holmes had released me, and was now exploring the whole of that appendage with agile and achingly gentle fingers. This time, I did not look to his face. Again, I closed my eyes, and concentrated only on the gentle stroking, the careful exploration, the subtlest movements on my pinked, virgin skin. Now, with a touch so light he barely stirred the fine hairs on the back of my hand, and now with a gentle palpitation for muscle and bone, he grew to know all: mapping each finger, flexing each joint, tracing each nail bed with careful attention. When he was, seemingly, satisfied, he turned my hand, and began to learn my palm. He drew his fingers slowly across, from wrist to fingers, and outlined the underside of each digit before returning again to the palm. With his index finger he followed my lifeline, swirled around fingerprint whorls; no detail escaped him. His gentlest touch he saved for my injured wrist, which he encircled with nimble fingers in a soothing caress. I felt his profound apology through my skin to my very bones; I believe I felt his heart.

The effect that he had on me – well. My entire body and spirit shrunk to inhabit the portion of my body he deigned to touch; in these small and silent caresses, he touched all of me, knew all, took all, gave all. It was not often that Holmes allowed his mind to inhabit his body so unrestrainedly as to let it to speak so clearly, but we communed, that night, in our twining hands, and mingled breaths. I am not an inexperienced man – rather the opposite – but I believed then as I do now, that I have never been touched as intimately as he touched me that night.

We lay together for some time, lost in our shared world, I think, and insensible to our surroundings. I know my face was wet, yet I was not sad. He held me, body and soul, in a single hand; he won me without a word.

After an entirely indiscrete length of time, Holmes gave my wrist a last, gentle squeeze and tucked his arm back into his cotton shroud just as our valet approached, murmuring regretfully about the lateness of the hour. We rose from our couches, and followed the valet in the usual way to dress in the usual way, before making our way back to the street and home to Baker Street in what was indubitably our usual way. Nothing at all had changed, and at the same time, we were together reborn.

***

I have no wish to mourn; my time for that has passed. I have Holmes back with me, truly now, and he has me, and we each orbit the other as we shall do, I hope and believe, until the end of our days. And yet, there is a bittersweet quality to our lives together now. The memory of that evening has not faded from my mind, nor will it. I do not know whether to grieve or rejoice that there has never been a recurrence of this singular incident. I fear and long for it in equal measure. My body remains attuned to his; it is – I tremble with it – irrevocable.

And so, when I need it, there is always that familiar volume tucked away high on our sitting room bookcase; on a chilly evening, or a bleak morning after a sleepless night, when Holmes is lost to his black dogs, when his face shutters against the world and all in it, the well-thumbed volume falls open on my lap. There is comfort where there is truth, and the immortal poet speaks far truer words than ever Holmes or I were able.

_If they be two, they are two so_  
 _As stiffe twin compasses are two,_  
 _Thy soule the fixt foot, makes no show_  
 _To move, but doth, if the’other doe._

_And though it in the center sit,_  
 _Yet when the other far doth rome,_  
 _It leans, and hearkens after it,_  
 _And growes erect, as that comes home._

_Such wilt thou be to mee, who must_  
 _Like th’other foot, obliquely run;_  
 _Thy firmness drawes my circle just,_  
 _And makes me end, where I begunne._

As for young Billy’s father, the seriousness of his injury and subsequent illness resulted in a fearfully extended convalescence, but under the care of my attentive colleague he eventually made a full recovery. Though he eschewed my repeated offers to fit him with a modern limb prosthesis, he made remarkable progress with his remaining leg, achieving surprising equilibrium and strength. Although he never again took paid work in the docks, he and Billy now make a reasonable living for themselves. As with nature, so too with men: a vigorous stream, when obstructed, will always flow around to discover a secondary course in order to resume its true path. Billy, with Holmes’ silent assistance, procured a placement as a shop boy with a kindly old merchant who was in Holmes’ debt, while his father found congenial employment with their neighborhood tobacconist, which we took to frequenting. They continue on quite happily together, though always in the shadow of their many losses.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to the Carpenter and Ceapcologne for their exceptionally helpful beta reads.
> 
> The poem, of course, is Donne's Valediction: Forbidding Mourning -- a poem I cannot read without thinking of Holmes and Watson, for some reason.
> 
> The Northumberland baths did indeed exist, and further information (plus some glorious photos) can be found here: http://www.victorianturkishbath.org/
> 
> As always, comments and feedback are greatly appreciated. Come find me on Tumblr; I'm doctornerdington there, too.


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